Character Animator not Blinking on Trigger.

[Simbull_Productions]

I have a very annoying problem. I'm going crazy. Too many wasted days and hours on this. 

I have 4 states +(some currently inactive extras). Happy, Sad, Angry, Shocked. 

I have managed to get all the states to blink propelry (after countless hours of trial and error). When I make the eyes a trigger however the blinks only trigger for that state if it is set as the defualt/primary set in the trigger panel. 

If I toggle between the states with keyboard trigger, midi trigger or controls panel with icons, latched or no the blinks become disabled.

I have layered them all right it seems as the blinks actually work normally, just not when triggered. 

And yes, I have tagged each state with a different view.

Neutral Eyeballs and Blinks - Frontal

Sad Eyeballs and Blink - 3/4 R

Angry - Proflie Right

Shocked - 3/4 L

And no its not a cycle layers issue for the blinks as they only have one state and I dont have the cycle layers behavior enabled on anything (yet). 

Basically it seems like the default system blinks have no problem but they seem to clash with the overide request (even tagged as a different state, Frontal,3/4,Profile), but I'm no dev. Just shootin in the dark. 

At least from what I can tell this isnt the common issue that everyone faces with either

1.Cycle layers, or

2.Tagging incorrectly, (or tagging in a clever way to bypass adobe's inabilty to perfrom the programming function.)

This is a last ditch effort. I have been working on this prject for far too long and I just want to take it out for drive. I havent even fine tuned the dangles an dragables, magnets, arm rigs etc yet cos I'm too caught up in the technical nightmare!! I just want to create and perfrom and all I'm doing instead is pulling my hair out. 

And my client is getting antsy as I'm waaay past the delivery date. 

Someone please help. 

One of the only reasons I still use adobe when they charge so much for thier service is this program. Considering almost everything else is availible for free like Davinci Reslove, Dark Table, Blender, Gimp, and countless others, it's becoming a tougher sell everyday. Who knows, maybe this will push me over the edge to opt out. The program has so much promise, but being adobe it might just get suddenly discontinued with no explination too. Wouldnt be fist time. 

All I know is that I'm at my wits end and I'm going crazy over what seems like the simplest thing. 

[Simbull_Productions]

Ohh and I also treid adding the face and the autoblink behaviors to the states/emotions. And that didnt work either. 

[alank99101739]

Are you able to share some screenshots of the rigging hierarchy? I am finding it a bit hard to follow exactly the structure you are using. For blinks, find the Face behavior, select it, then look in the Properties panel. For the Face behavior there should be a Views, Handles, and Replacements section. Expanding "Replacements" you should see Left Blink and Right Blink. Expand those layers and you should see the layers it found in your puppet. I would look through the Views, Handles, and Replacements to see if the values seem "sane", or is it only finding some of the blink layers in your artwork. If it is not finding them all, then that becomes the first target to investigate why not.

[Simbull_Productions]

Thanks AlanK. Your a legend. Seen a lot of your input across these forums looking for common problems and fixes. 

Good news!! Lucily this time it was a jus heirachy issue and I resolved it quickly but putting the blinks in the correct folders. It can get finneky with some of the blinks and pupils. I am using a clipping mask on the folder of pupils above the eye shapes. It's almost where I want it to be. But I still have alot of fine tuning to go. 

I lerned a lot while looking for answers and figured out better workflows. Had heaps of issues along the way.But I'm slowly ironing them out.